Porto Santo was till lately distinguished only for pride, poverty, and purity of blood. Her soil, according to the old chroniclers, has never been polluted, like São Thomé and other colonies, by convicts, Jews, or other 'infected peoples.' She was populated by Portuguese 'noble and taintless'--Palestrellos, Calaças, Pinas, Vieyras, Rabaçaes, Crastos, Nunes, Pestanas, and Concellos. And yet not a little scandal was caused by Holiport when the 'Prophet Fernando' and the 'Prophetess Philippa' (Nunes), 'instigated by the demon and the deceitfulness of mankind,' induced the ecclesiastics to introduce into the introit, with the names of St. Peter and St. Paul, the 'Blessed Prophet Fernando.' The tale of murder is told with holy horror by Dr. Gaspar Fructuoso, and the islanders are still nicknamed 'prophetas.' Foreigners, however, who have lately visited them, speak highly of their simple primitive ways. I boated to the Holy Port in 1862, when Messieurs Blandy's steamship _Falcon_ was not in existence. And now as the _Luso_ steamed along shore, no external change appeared. A bird's-eye view of the islet suggests a _podão_ or Madeiran billhook, about six miles by three. The tool's broken point is the Ilha da Cima, facing to north-east, a contorted pile which resembles a magnified cinder. The handle is the Ilheu Baixo, to the south; and the blade is the tract of yellow sandy lowlands--the sole specimen of its sort in the Madeiras--connecting the extremities. Three tall cones at once disclose vulcanism; the Pico de Facho, or Beacon Peak (1,660 feet), the Pico de Anna Ferreira (910 feet), and the sugarloaf Pico de Castello (1,447 feet). The latter rises immediately north of the single town, and its head still shows in white points the ruins of the fort which more than once saved the population from the 'Moors.' The lower levels are terraced, as usual in this archipelago, and the valleys are green with vines and cereals. The little white _Villa Baleira_ is grouped around its whiter church, and dotted with dark vegetation, trees, and houses, straggling off into open country. Here lodge the greater part of the islanders, now nearly 1,750 souls. The population is far too thick. But the law of Portugal has, till lately, forbidden emigration to the islanders unless a substitute for military service be provided; the force consists of only 250 men, and the term of service is three years; yet a _remplaçant_ costs upwards of 50_l_. Every emigrant was, therefore, an energetic stowaway, who landed at Honolulu or Demerara without shoes and stockings, and returned in a few years with pounds sterling enough to purchase an estate and a pardon. Half-a-dozen boats, some of them neat little feluccas with three masts, are drawn up on the beach: there is not much fishing; the vine-disease has raged, and the staple export consists of maize in some quantities; of _cantaria,_ a grey trachyte which works more freely than the brown or black basalt,